Hard Learning

This last Thursday, at 5:00 PM, was the final moment before my offer expired. At 5:40 I hadn’t heard anything at all. Not a word. So I called the broker and after one ring he sent me to voicemail. And then sent a text message saying he couldn’t talk at the moment. I guess at the time of my offer expiring he decided to schedule another meeting? Seemed odd to me but oh well. I just told him to give me a call later.

After another two hours went by he finally called me back and let me know that the owners had decided to reject my offer and weren’t even bothering to send a counter offer. I very much got the impression that the owners were not pleased by my offer. But the fact of the matter is that I did quite a bit of research and, considering the problems with the industry, both national and statewide, I still believe it was a very fair offer. In fact, my initial assessment was quite a bit less than what I finally ended up offering.

At this point I think this means that the matter is closed. If the owners are not willing to consider an offer in this range then there’s no point in trying to offer them a little more money and offering a lot more money is entirely out of the question. If, down the road, they start to realize that the business is not worth what they think it is and they contact me about my offer then I’ll be happy to discuss it, but I think it’s time to move on.

In the last 6 months or so I’ve learned an awful lot about the small business world. I’ve found that trying to buy a business isn’t nearly as hard or as intimidating as it might seem. I’m going to use this experience and start looking around for something else. I image there must still be plenty of opportunities out there and it’s time find a good one.